by Scott King
Learn How To Write A Novel By Reading Harry Potter
Scott King
Clark Chamberlain
Neither the authors nor the publishers are affiliated with Rowling, Scholastic, or Bloomsbury. This book is a literary analysis of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and does not imply any recommendation or affiliation with the Harry Potter franchise. It is meant to further scholarship and is not a spin-off, companion volume, sequel or prequel to the Harry Potter series.
This book is a work of non-fiction.
Learn How to Write A Novel By Reading is Published by Majestic Arts
Cover Design by Scott King
Cover Art by Kevin Cromwell
Manufactured in the United States of America
Copyright ©2018 Scott King
ISBN: 9781726656993
First Edition: October 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
The Takeaways
Goodbyes
About The Authors
Books by Scott King
Also from Scott King
Also From Scott King
Books by Clark Chamberlian
Introduction
Welcome to Learn How To Write A Novel By Reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I’m Scott King and I have co-written this book with Clark Chamberlain. In many ways, this book is a re-read of the first Harry Potter novel, but with a slant. Even though Clark is an active college professor and I’m a former college professor, our re-read is geared to not only pick out themes or help a reader prepare for a quiz or book report. What Clark and I want to do is to teach you how to write a novel, using Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as the central example.
Readers love Harry Potter and, whether you are a fan not, as someone interested in writing it’s worth examining how J.K. Rowling wrote the novels to see what techniques you can apply to your own writing.
Learn How To Write A Novel By Reading Harry Potter is meant to be read alongside Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. The chapters in this book are numbered to match those in Harry Potter. We suggest you read a chapter in Harry Potter, then return here to read the analysis that goes with it. Each chapter will include a list of “take aways” that you should note and at the end of this book all the take aways will be grouped together for easy reference.
There are lots of books a would-be author should read, but it makes sense to teach how to write a novel via Harry Potter because the series as a whole is such a powerhouse that has infiltrated pop culture and literature in a way that no other series has.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was published in 1997 in the U.K. and 1998 in the U.S. At the time of this writing, it’s just over twenty years old and yet is already a true classic and will be loved for generations to come. It is the book that launched one of the best-selling series of all time. Because of both its cultural impact and its literary merits, it is worth studying.
According to a press release put out by Scholastic in 2017, the seven books in the Harry Potter series have sold more than 450 million copies. The movie franchise has made more than $7 billion and the novels have been translated into sixty-seven languages. Considering that the series has only existed for two decades, those are astounding numbers.
The tone and genre of the series shift with each of the books so that the early novels are clearly middle grade, but as the characters age, the books become Young Adult.
The novel is 76,944 words long. The original U.K. edition had 223 pages and the original U.S. edition had 309 pages. For a children’s middle-grade novel, that’s a bit long. Most middle-grade novels live around the 50,000 word count and so right off the bat, it’s clear that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was written and published not to fit into a mold or traditional label, but to tell the story it intended to tell.
As the series was originally published, many readers got to grow up in real time with Harry, Hermione, Ron and the rest of the characters. The novels were so loved that teachers and librarians incorporated them into schools. It became socially acceptable to like Harry Potter and as a result, it helped shape a generation of children.
The original fans of Harry Potter are old enough now to have children of their own, so although the series has been wrapped, the cycle will continue, passing from one generation to the next. That’s the power of the series and the power you can learn by studying Rowling’s writing.
- Scott King
February 3rd, 2018
Chapter One
The Boy Who Lived
Chapter Summary:
The chapter is broken into two halves with the first following Vernon Dursley and the second focusing on Albus Dumbledore.
Vernon goes about his mundane day, slowly piecing together that weird things are happening. He sees lots of owls, people in strange clothes, and unusual terms like “muggle.” By the midpoint of the chapter, he is worried that the oddities have to do with his sister-in-law Lily Potter, her husband James, and their son Harry.
The day ends and when it does, Albus Dumbledore uses a Put-Outer to hide his arrival to the Dursleys’ house. He never goes inside, but instead chats with Mrs. McGonagall, who has the power to shape-shift into a cat. Through their discussion, it is revealed that the strange events do have to do with Vernon’s extended family. A powerful entity called “Voldemort” killed Lily and James, but their son Harry lives.
Hagrid arrives on a flying motorcycle and gives baby Harry to Dumbledore. Dumbledore writes a note and leaves Harry on Vernon’s doorstep. The next morning Harry is discovered by Petunia Dursley, Vernon’s wife and Lily’s sister.
Point of View:
The first half “The Boy Who Lived” is told mostly from Mr. Dursley’s point of view and the second half is told mostly from Albus Dumbledore’s point of view. However, mixed in are moments where the narrator talks directly to the audience. This type of viewpoint is referred to as Third Person Omniscient. It’s commonly used when there is a distinct narrator or storyteller telling a story.
The point of view is made clear in the second sentence of the book with the phrase, “You’d expect.” The fourth wall is broken and the narrator directly talks to the reader. It happens again four paragraphs later with the sentence, “When Mr. and Mrs. Dursley woke up on the dull, gray Tuesday, our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country.”
The use of “you’d” and “our” establishes the narrator as someone who knows the full story of what is going on and isn’t limited to the knowledge that specific characters might know. By doing this, the storyteller is able to set things up and play with how the reader is aware of things that the characters themselves don’t know. This happens in the first half of the chapter with Mr. Dursley. From the start, the reader is aware that strange and mysterious things are happening, bu
t it takes half the chapter for Mr. Dursley to come to terms with that.
Mr. Dursley goes to work. With his desk facing away from the window, he doesn’t see the owls swooping about, but because of the storyteller-style narrator, the reader sees the owls. The juxtaposition of known information can be used to create a sense of irony, conflict, and anticipation.
It is made clear to the reader that Mr. Dursley wants a bland, normal life. The narrator also makes it clear to the reader that strange things will happen and shows strange things happening. This creates anticipation because the reader is then expecting and waiting for Mr. Dursley to be let in on the secret and waiting to see his reaction to the abnormal occurrences. This kind of manipulation is like allowing the reader to be let in on an inside joke, and then getting them excited for the joke to be made public.
Point of view is a tool and picking what kind of viewpoint you wish to use should be one of the first meaningful decisions you make. Throughout the entire novel, Rowling makes use of the narrator’s voice to provoke, twist, and direct the reader.
All stories are written in a specific point of view. It is the technical way in which a story is communicated. Point of view is the lens and window through which the reader sees the story. There are four main types of point of view: first person, second person, third person limited, and third person omniscient.
First person is when a story is told from a character’s immediate view. In these kinds of stories the pronouns used are I, Me, and My. Using first person gives the reader an open door to the character’s thoughts and when done right it can bond a reader to a character faster and more thoroughly than other points of view.
Second person is less popular and more commonly used in choose-your-own-adventure-style books, non-fiction, or literary fiction. The pronouns used with it are you and your. Unless you are an experienced author and truly know what you are doing, you are better off avoiding second person.
Both kinds of third person points of view use pronouns like she/he/they and hers/his/theirs. In a limited point of view, the story stays close to a single person’s thoughts and doesn’t stray. In omniscient, the narrator knows everything that is happening and thus the viewpoint can jump around from character to character.
Third person omniscient has fallen out of style in contemporary fiction. It is still used and a valid way to tell a story, but takes more skill to pull off. If you are writing a novel in third person, you need to make it clear from the start if it is limited or omniscient. Switching between the two will cause reader confusion, and that is bad. You don’t want anything in your novel that will pull your reader out of the story. Every time they are pulled out, there is the chance they will decide to not go back into it.
Handling third person omniscient takes skill. Dune is considered one of the greatest novels told with it, and Rowling does a wonderful job of using it in “The Boy Who Lived,” but as you continue reading through the rest of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, you’ll notice she shies away from it into a more limited view, only breaking it with purpose. If she hadn’t established the omniscient narrative voice in chapter one, this is not something she would have been able to do.
Establishing Character:
One of Rowling’s special skills is her ability to create and show character. Throughout the entire series, there are hundreds of characters and yet they each have a distinct feel and personality. As we proceed through Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone we will look at some of the tricks she uses to make this happen.
The novel opens with the sentence, “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.”
From the very first sentence, it is clear who the Dursleys are. They are stuffy, rigid, and care more about looks and appearance than anything else. These are relatable traits and there is a good chance you know people like this. Maybe your neighbor, a co-worker, or that one snobby guy from high school is obsessed with being normal.
These easy-to-understand personality traits even fit with simple prose descriptions of their looks. Mr. Dursley has “hardly any neck” and Mrs. Dursley has “twice the usual amount of neck.” With only a few words, the reader is able to picture what these people look like and gets a distinct visual image that can later be fleshed out if necessary.
For a novel that has so much to do with magic and a strange world, it makes sense for Rowling to kick things off by following Mr. Dursley. He offers a buffer to gradually suck the reader into the world and even has a tiny arc throughout the first chapter.
As the day ticks by, Mr. Dursley’s mindset shifts as he is exposed to more odd events. The day begins and he feels that it’s a normal day and nothing strange is happening. He sees a cat reading a map, but tries to tell himself he didn’t. He sees people wearing cloaks and funny clothes, and as the day progresses he finally accepts that something strange is happening. He hears people talking about “the Potters” and tells himself it is not the same Potters that are his in-laws. His doubt shifts when he hears the name “Harry.” He convinces himself that it has to be a different Harry, and yet as he is falling asleep he thinks to himself “…even if the Potters were involved…” showing a total reversal from where his mindset was when the day started.
By the time the second half of the chapter comes about, and Albus Dumbledore is introduced, the reader is excited and willing to experience a world of strange things, having gone through Mr. Dursley’s slow realization to what was happening.
Making Promises and Hooking Readers:
When a reader starts a novel, certain things, like the point of view, must be established. A novel is a promise to a reader. An author creates a story, and in the blurb, cover design, and early chapters, they make promises to a reader saying “Hey, this book is this kind of story.” Readers get very upset if they go to read a novel and the story is a different kind of story than the one they were expecting.
The genre and tone are the most important things to establish and in “The Boy Who Lived,” Rowling is on point with her promises. Upfront she lets it be known that there is an omniscient narrator and that if she ever wants to cut to different viewpoints or tell the reader something that the characters don’t know, she can.
Mr. Dursley’s acceptance of odd things happening is a promise that lots of strange events and things will be appearing in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Dumbledore using the Put-Outer and McGonagall shape-shifting to a cat let the reader know that even if it will be a few chapters before we see it again, there will be magic in this book.
If the novel opened and the first chapter was cut out of it, the reader would be thrown into Harry’s life and everything would feel depressing and boring. By including the first chapter, Rowling is promising the reader that a whole world of magic is coming.
Although there is no action in the chapter, McGonagall and Dumbledore talk about Harry’s parents being murdered. They mention Voldemort and reference the end of a long war. The darkness of these events mixed with the Rowling’s humor set a clear tone for what it is to come.
Not establishing these things upfront puts the author at risk of losing readers. Readers want cool stuff to happen, but as an author, sometimes cool stuff must come later. Sometimes cool stuff has to be earned for it to become cool and by offering a taste of the cool stuff, the author is making a promise saying, “Trust me, awesomeness is coming.”
Harry Potter is a fantasy series and some of the cool stuff that later appears include paintings that move, magical candies, epic battles, scary monsters, and tons more. Fantasy, is built upon whimsy and magic and readers expect those kinds of things, while in a political thriller they may expect a mind-bending twist or shocking death. Genre helps inform what cool stuff might be coming and readers want to know early on what kind of story they will be reading.
In addition to establishing the kind of story you are trying to tell, an author needs to hook their readers. Reading, to a lot of people, is work. Reading takes effort and if there isn’t a hook that makes a reader more interested, what’s to stop them from putting the book down to go to play a video game, watch a movie, or waste time on social media?
If you have never read A Game of Thrones, the opening prologue is an action-filled sequence with ice zombies called White Walkers. It’s exciting, and straight-up horror and adventure. It’s an awesome way to suck people into a story and it makes a promise to the reader saying, “Look, I may get side-tracked with a bunch of crazy political and social stuff, but we will get back to this awesome scariness.” The White Walkers are a hook to grab attention and make the readers want more.
Star Wars: A New Hope does the same thing. The opening sequence happens on galactic spaceships with a shoot-out and Darth Vader capturing Princess Leia. The story then cuts away and focuses on Luke Skywalker living his perfectly normal and mundane life. The opening sequence is there to entice the viewer and to hold their attention.
In “The Boy Who Lived,” other than teasing the reader with magic, Rowling hooks the reader by dangling mysteries in front of them. It’s hard not to read the chapter and then have a list of questions like:
•Why did Voldemort kill Harry’s parents?
•How did Harry live?
•What happened to Voldemort?
